I know everybody is all Honey,-have-you-heard! about Jared Kushner meeting with officials representing a Russian bank while it was under sanctions.

He was simply applying for an ATM card.  You know, in case the sanctions were lifted, because he had heard from pillow talk that may happen under a Trump administration.

U.S. officials said that after meeting with Russian Kislyak at Trump Tower last December, a meeting also attended by Flynn, Kushner met later in December with Sergei Gorkov, chairman of Vnesheconombank.

White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed the meetings, saying nothing of consequence was discussed.

Gorkov was appointed head of VEB in early 2016 by Russian President Vladimir Putin. He graduated from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, Russia’s internal security agency. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Merit for Services to the Fatherland, according to the bank’s website.

“Nothing of consequence.”  Oh sure, we believe that. Just some guys sitting around talking about the Super Bowl.

(As an aside, there is a White House spokeswoman named Hope Hicks?  The Hicks part caught my eye and my funny bone this morning.  So, I looked her up.  She’s a lovely young woman who is one of Ivanka’s models.  I am completely serious.)

Okay, here’s the deal.

Devin Nunes, National Man of Mystery, made an announcement that Trump’s communications may have been picked up by the CIA.  He won’t say where he got that information or why he took it to the White House before revealing it to other members of the committee.

Well, let’s add another conundrum to this. Nunes admits that he was on “White House grounds” the day before he made the announcement, but that he did not go in the White House.

In all fairness, there are other buildings that share the White House grounds.

It went down like this.

Two congressional sources said Nunes was with a staff member Tuesday night when he got a message, got out of the car and got into an Uber. Staff did not hear again from him that night.

They next heard from Nunes Wednesday morning, the day he scheduled a news conference before going to the White House. The staff do not know where he went Tuesday night.

Bond. James Bond.

Or maybe hiking the Appalachian trail?

A specially called Congress Anonymous meeting?

Nunes said he was there for additional meetings “to confirm what I already knew” but said he wouldn’t comment further so as to not “compromise sources and methods.”

Okay, look, if you already knew it, couldn’t you confirm it with yourself?

An unnamed government official says that Nunes was seen at the National Security Council offices of the Eisenhower building on that night, probably pretending to the Mata Hari.

Nunes has more secrets than a parish priest in Las Vegas.

Congressman, you can be on the House Intelligence Committee or you can be Jason Bourne, but you can’t be both.

When trying to get a bill passed in Congress, there are several things that work – reasoning, logic, research, even horse trading. Those things all work.

This is not how it works.

The Washington Post detailed the House GOP’s fight over the ObamaCare repeal and replacement plan this week, rounding up the dramatic details of leadership’s fight to win support for the measure.

At one point, the paper said, House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) got down on one knee to plead with Rep. Don Young of Alaska – the longest-serving Republican in Congress — to support the bill. (He was unsuccessful.)

Oh Paul. Oh dear. That’s an image I cannot get out of my mind. Oh dear. I know that taking away health insurance from 24 million American meant a lot to you, but on your knee?

Besides, Paul, I think Young meant something else when he wanted you on your knees. And, come to think of it, that might have worked.

Here’s how this bill passing thing works:

TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP

When Donald J. Trump was elected to the office of…jeez, I still have a hard time typing it – president, I vowed to never use his name publicly so as to not help raise his name identity on social media or to acknowledge that he was legitimately elected to the office.  I have maintained that stance until today.

But facts and media have changed. Since January 20, social, mainstream, and cable media have made a marked shift in the way they report on Trump.  Before the inauguration, the media glibly repeated virtually every claim made by him, cowed by his vicious twitter attacks and afraid of WH recriminations.  They gave him billions of dollars of free media coverage that helped elect him.  That has now changed.  The Washington Post is now tracking his lies on a daily basis.  Scott Pelley of CBS is becoming well known for his steadfast truth telling and calling false false.  Last night, 60 Minutes did a cover story on fake news and the damage it does.  Time Magazine’s cover story this week asks if truth is dead. Numerous fact checkers are piling up mountains of corrections to Trump’s continuous stream of lies.  NPR has stopped using the name Mara Lago, wanting to avoid inadvertent advertising for his highest profile property.  Hell, even Fox Noise has moderated some  of its lies because he simply repeats them on twitter.

Trump’s name is now more associated with negative than positive, so I’ve decided to use it – a lot.  So, for those of you who have openly and privately complained to me about using the monikers SCROTUS, Cheeto Jesus, The Orange One, and His Orangeness, you can now stop complaining.  But just know that I’m not switching due to your complaints; I’m switching because using his name is more effective to connect it to the damage he’s doing to our society.  From now on, it will be TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP.

So there.

Last week was one of the most disastrous weeks of Cheeto’s administration where his biggest promise, kicking 24 million people off of healthcare, came crashing down to decisive defeat.  Republicans, knowing he actually is nuts and would sign anything they put in front of him, finally woke up and decided that taking healthcare away from their voters would actually lower their chances for re-election, their only true goal.

So, CJ put that promise back on the shelf and has now moved to making government “sleek”, by assigning his son in law, Jared Kushner, to yet another new job.  So far, his primary job has been trying to keep his father in law from chopping up the Resolute desk and using it for kindling to burn down the White House, and so far, that has been pretty much a full time job.  Now young Kushner is going to head up the shiny new White House Office of American Innovation, a supposed think tank made up of an amalgamation of billionaire inventors and business people who have been charged with making the US government run like a business.  Of course, the US Government is not a business and CAN’T be run like one, but no matter, here’s our new shiny thing to talk about while the Congress continues to ignore the actual threat to the US government – the Russians.

I’ll give this one two weeks or so, then we’ll be consumed with another incendiary tweet from His Orangeness.

Jesus.  No, really.  Jesus.

Smokey Joe Barton (he’s been bought by the oil bidness) is a Texas congressidiot who gleefully admitted that all those times the GOP voted to repeal Obamacare was a waste of time, my money, and everybody’s intelligence.

Smokey Joe makes the newspapers:

Reporters asked why, after Republicans held dozens of nearly-unanimous votes to repeal Obamacare under President Obama, they were getting cold feet now that they control the levers of power.

“Sometimes you’re playing Fantasy Football and sometimes you’re in the real game,” he said. “We knew the president, if we could get a repeal bill to his desk, would almost certainly veto it. This time we knew if it got to the president’s desk it would be signed.”

So Joe and the Republicans spent eight damn years in a Fantasy game?

Nice of him to admit it.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.